Olifante's Lair

MIT Press shopping spree

A fortunate coincidence meant that the MIT Press Bookstore Loading Dock Sale took place on the same weekend as Startup School. When I say fortunate, I mean fortunate for the bookstore owners: I came out 10 books heavier and $60 lighter. These are the books I got suckered into buying:

                                         

As if this wasn't enough to make me wonder how much I would be paying in excess baggage fees, between visits to Borders and Barnes & Nobles in downtown Boston I still managed to buy another 3 books:

           

The Head First Design Patterns book is currently the best-selling item in the Amazon.com Java section. I already knew that the book was quite, errr, unorthodox, but I was surprised all the same when I saw how tall and thick it is. I was also a bit disappointed when I started leafing through it: it looks like a book written for teenagers. I bought it anyway, thanks to all the rave reviews, and when I started reading some of first chapters I actually found its irreverent style very effective. In spite of what all the funky graphics might imply, the book is packed with information AND very understandable. Another very accessible patterns book is "Design Patterns Explained", which I've lent to several people with good success.

As for the Martin Fowler book, it's brilliant, or rather, it's brilliantly simple. This is a must-have introduction and reference for people who want to get into Software Architecture. Its first 100 pages present in a very compact but readable form the major concepts and problems of enterprise application development. The remaining pages present a detailed catalog of mostly architecture patterns. Maybe I'm exagerating, but I think the book is worth the price just for the 100-page intro, which basically lays out a common language for discussing most important concepts, problems and solutions of software architecture. I wish I had this book a few years ago.

China Miéville

The Believer has a great Interview With China Mieville. The focus is on his latest novel, "Iron Council", which I still haven't read. I'm waiting for Bruno to lend it to me ;-). Here are some excerpts from the interview:

[...] I am completely a geek. I find it very interesting entering my thirties, because the early thirties basically seems to be the era of the revenge of the geek, when those of us who didn’t have particularly exciting teenage years because we were too busy obsessively collecting comics and playing Dungeons & Dragons suddenly start running the world

[...]

The thing about genre fantasy is that it is its own end, but it also does that job of symbolizing. I think about something like Gulliver’s Travels. The figures of the Lilliputians are partly a way for Gulliver to overlook society from a godlike height and to make satirical, symbolic comments, but it’s also, “Hey look, little tiny people! How cool!”

[...]

I remember someone saying once that they really hated my books because they weren’t “inspiring,” but I just can’t get with this idea that literature is a twelve-step program. If someone wants to read a book to feel better, and the way they want to feel better is to see that the good people get rewarded and the bad people get punished, that’s fine, but essentially what they want then is a fairy tale.

I bought "Perdido Street Station" (PSS) around 3 years ago, after reading scores of rave online reviews. It didn't just meet my expectations - it utterly blew them away.

In PSS, only his second major novel after "King Rat", Miéville disregards genre boundaries and seamlessly blends Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror into a single style which he names "Weird Fiction".

PSS is set in the city of New Crobuzon, in the world of Bas-Lag, and the city itself plays a major part in the story. Its presence is constantly felt, heavy, poisonous and suffocating. PSS falls in the category of world-building books largely created by Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. But whereas Tolkien's books are systematic, always trying to feed you more detailed descriptions of past events, Miéville has a far more sophisticated approach. Bas-Lag is a world you slowly discover through scattered comments, and Miéville makes sure you always feel like your vision is clouded, distorted and partial, as if you'd just stumbled into his world.

Miéville is also a much better stylist than Tolkien. His prose is exuberant and dense, often peppered with strange, exotic words which help convey a sense of disorientation. Most of all, the story is fast-paced and compelling, at times terrifying. A page-turner if there ever was one, I was amazed to find I was actually scared by PSS: In one of the main scenes, when the major characters enter the things' nest, my heart thumped heavily for several pages.

PSS is one of the best books I've ever read, and certainly the most exciting Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror/Whatever book I've read in the last 10 years. Even if PSS were the only book Miéville ever wrote, it would have been enough to firmly place him on the pantheon of major writers. Fortunately it seems Miéville intends to keep on writing, let's hope his other books prove as worthwhile.

America Right or Wrong

AsiaSource has a fascinating interview with Anatol Lieven in which he discusses several themes underlying his recent book, America, Right or Wrong. The interview is filled to the brim with quotable stuff. Here are some snippets:

On the invasion of Iraq:

Iraq has been a disaster for their aims. They have gotten away with it of course in that they have been re-elected but it is perfectly obvious that they cannot launch another war of choice, another invasion of Iran, say. They simply do not have the troops. With almost 150,000 men pinned down in Iraq, they could not launch another war on that scale without introducing conscription. That would tear American society apart and for the first time since Vietnam lead to a significant anti-imperialist movement in this country. It would also, for the first time, lead to really serious questions about what America is doing in the Middle East at all.

On China Containment:

[...] [O]bviously they would still very much like to destroy China if they could, or at least destroy China as a potential future threat to American hegemony. But as long as they are tied down in the Middle East in the way they are, they will not have the military forces to do so.

Therefore, I believe that the Bush administration and future Democrat administrations will continue the existing line. That said of course there is always room for mistakes either on the part of Washington or of Beijing or of Taipei or most likely of all three simultaneously. The Taiwanese can go too far, and the Chinese can overreact, not because the Chinese want war but because they would trap themselves into a position where they would have to do something. [...] [T]hen the US, and particularly the American Congress, have put themselves in such a position that they would be forced to fight as well.

On the odds of an attack on Iran:

It is still a possibility. Not I believe such a strong possibility now because apart from everything else the Iranians do seem very anxious to play along with Europe, and are willing at least to suspend their nuclear weapons plans in response to a mixture of European pressure and incentives with American threats. But if America were to attack Iran, it would be a catastrophe. Poor old Tony Blair has accepted so many shattering blows already maybe nothing will finish him, but having invested so much in this process with Iran, if it were to end in an American attack, it seems likely that there would be a serious revolt within his government and party and he would have to resign. There are leading members of the British government briefing in private that whatever Tony Blair says, if America attacks Iran, that is the end. They will resign. This would almost certainly be the end of Blair's tenure as prime minister. It would also create a massive crisis with the Europeans. Moreover, given the fact that Iran's nuclear sites are dispersed and buried, America would very likely miss, at which point we will have the worst of all possible worlds. As the American military know very well, Iran in these circumstances would have numerous means of retaliation against American forces and plans in Iraq - whereas an American invasion of Iran looks impossible because of America's lack of troops.

[...] It is not inconceivable that there could emerge some disastrous quid pro quo whereby Israel will make certain concessions towards the Palestinians and in return America go after Iran's nuclear weapons. But of course the consequences might be frightful because of course Iran would then have every incentive to try to really destabilize Iraq. Hezbollah could be reactivated as an international terrorist force. Iran would set out to destabilize Afghanistan, and so forth and so on.

On the affinity between Christian fundamentalism and Zionism:

If one just looks at the Christian fundamentalist issue, leaving the millenarian question aside, American evangelical Protestantism is Old Testament Protestantism - just as its forbearers in English radical Protestantism and Scottish radical Protestantism were in the 16th and 17th centuries. This creates a natural affinity with the Jewish religious tradition. When evangelical Christian Lieutenant-General William Boykin was quoted last year as saying, "My God is bigger than his," in reference to a Muslim, he was directly citing from Isaiah and this is obviously a man who spends a lot of his time in the Old Testament.

It is fascinating the degree to which the Old Testament eclipses the New Testament in the thought of evangelical Christians and this automatically leads one to a sympathy with Israel.

On civil service and academia:

I used to think that it is wonderful that the American state can recruit from people in academia but I have come to find it deeply corrupting. I almost prefer the British system now, of career civil servants who serve one administration after another. But one needs a strong ethos of the independence of the civil service and a very strong ethos that people cannot be sacked or penalized for political views as long as they maintain the discipline of their service. This actually leaves the public debate in the UK freer than in the US, particularly in the strange, solipsistic world of Washington DC. It is amazing in a republic with a strong tradition of individualism and cultural egalitarianism, that in DC the sense of hierarchy, of sometimes obsequious deference, of the court game, who is in, who out, dominates everything just as much as it did in an early medieval court. It does contribute to this lack of debate in America.

Empires end by suicide, not murder:

[...] [I]f the Bush administration were feeling suicidal, and were actually in the mood to throw itself over a cliff, like the Hapsburgs in 1914, there are a number of ways it could do that. It could invade Iran, that would do it very quickly. Or it could invade Saudi Arabia. Or it could support Taiwanese independence. I don't believe they will actually do any of those things. Unfortunately, one can much more easily imagine the Bush administration doing something like bombing Iran, which would not lead to immediate disaster but which could begin a spiral of retaliation leading ultimately to catastrophic conflict.

Tempo de Parar e Pasmar

Lazer

What is this life if, full of care,
we have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs
and stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,
where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,
streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
and watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can
enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,
we have no time to stand and stare.

William Henry Davies

Found in Translation

The most untranslatable word in the world

A "Saudade" portuguesa aparece em sétimo lugar numa lista das dez palavras mais difíceis de traduzir para inglês. A lista é o resultado de um inquérito patrocinado pela agência de traduções Today Translations, e envolveu cerca de um milhar de linguistas. Aqui vai a lista completa:

1. ilunga [pessoa que perdoa tudo à primeira e à segunda ofensa, mas não à terceira (tshiluba, língua da família Bantu)]
2. shlimazl [azarado crónico (yiddish)]
3. radioukacz [telegrafista dos movimentos de resistência no lado soviético da Cortina de Ferro (polaco)]
4. naa [partícula usada para emfatizar declarações ou exprimir concordância (regionalismo japonês)]
5. altahmam [um tipo particular de tristeza profunda (árabe)]
6. gezellig [aconchegado, acolhedor (holandês)]
7. saudade
8. selathirupavar [certo tipo de gazeta ou falta injustificada (tamil)]
9. pochemuchka [perguntador excessivo (russo)]
10. klloshar [falhado, perdedor (albanês)]

Estas listas são sempre divertidas, mas há que explicar melhor o que se quer dizer com "impossível de traduzir" quando na mesma linha se oferece uma tradução. A ideia central é que a palavra em si não é impossível de traduzir: Saudade pode ser traduzido para inglês como "longing" ou para alemão como "Sehnsucht", e algumas outras palavras poderão ser traduzidas não por uma única palavra mas sim por uma expressão composta. A questão fundamental é que as palavras em questão ocupam um papel central numa determinada cultura, o que significa que qualquer tradução para outro idioma é incapaz de transportar todo o contexto cultural que ressoa com essa palavra.

Este é no final de contas o problema fundamental da tradução, tão brilhantemente discutido no maravilhoso livro Le Ton Beau De Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language: para traduzir de forma perfeita um texto, temos de traduzir também todo o universo de referências culturais no qual esse texto nasce. Essa tarefa é obviamente impossível, ou dito de outra maneira, a única forma de a concretizar consiste em mergulhar na língua e cultura do texto original. Foi a opção que tomei há já vários anos, quando me fartei das ineficiências das leituras por pessoa interposta e tomei a decisão deliberada de deixar de ler traduções de inglês para português e passar a ler exclusivamente os originais em inglês. A opção alternativa consiste em aceitar que a tradução completa é impossível - "Traduttore, Traditore" - e valorizar antes a ideia de transposição hibridizante. Douglas Hofstadter ilustra de forma exemplar no seu livro a ideia de que a tradução pode ser um trabalho profundamente criativo, e que o texto original pode ser enriquecido pelas novas leituras e contextos proporcionados por uma boa tradução.